‘Forget the noise around Tonali’published at 16:53 GMT
16:53 GMT
Barcelona v Newcastle (Wed, 17:45)
Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe on Sandro Tonali’s agent speaking about the player using the club as a “stepping stone” to move onto a bigger team: “At the moment, the person that matters the most in this is Sandro. So I prefer to take my lead from him. And all I’ve ever seen from Sandro is someone who’s totally committed, very much part of the team, very selfless at times.
“He’s here for the team. He’s not necessarily here for himself. This is the attitude that I’ve seen from from him. And of course, he had a really difficult moment when he first joined, and he showed real strength of character to get through that.
“Forget the noise around Sandro. He’s just fully committed, and he’s been ill the last few days, but before then, he was fully committed and trying to help us reproduce our best league form. And of course, he wants to do really well in this competition.”
On Tonali’s fitness: “We will have a look at Sandro. Today is the first chance we’ll have to see him. It’s an opportunity to train and we’ll make a decision. We hope he feels strong enough.”